That is so nice. Thanks for sharing, FT! I needed that today. My mom came down for a couple of days (I can't travel hardly at all anymore until after I get this surgery) and just left yesterday morning. Oh, how I miss growing up in such loving family. You can't go back, but you can remember.

You said it, brother! Just got my turn-down letter from SS. Don't know who those people expect sick people to live! Thank God and goodness I have a good family and good friends like you. Man, I couldn't imagine if I didn't have that support system. I especially feel bad for the mentally ill running around out there, or those who don't have those wonderful memories and good families. What happens to them when they get sick? When I get better, I'm going to volunteer a lot more!

I have another friend, also a victim of the sme dread disease, Jersey who also got turned down by Unemployment and Social Security, –– several times, till he finally gave up –- despite being totally incapactitated by his illness.

He too is a "liberal," and won't give it up, even though his personal experience with "government" has been fruitless, terribly disappointing and unpleasant.

I hate to be the one to rub it in, my friend, but the benevolent nature of a Big Brother-Style, Welfare State Regime is not only overrated, it is little more than a Pipe Dream –– aMYTH dreamt up by people who constinually deny the nature of HARSH REALITY, and of the politicians and entrenched bureaucrats who flourish and enrich themselves at the expense of wage earners while making a vain pretense at serving the crying needs of millions suffering from poverty and serious illness.

STATISMS STINKS to HIGH HEAVEN!

We are best sustained by the love of family, friends, private charities, the Church, and small government at the local level where interpersonal relatiinships with officialdom are still possible.

FT,I've known a few people who got SS Disability benefits on the first try: one with brain cancer @ age 47 (glioblastoma), one with multiple sclerosis @ age 50, and Mr. AOW (thalamic stroke @ age 60).

But everyone else I know had to apply at least twice.

I was advised not to apply for SS Disability based on my back injury -- never mind that I had to reduce from working full time to part time.

So glad that I'm now 65 and on Medicare! The kind of chronic kidney disease that I have will not allow me to qualify for SS Disability. But at least I can get Medicare! And all my doctors accept Medicare.

You can also receive standard monthly Social Security benefits, if only you would take them. EVERY financial guru I've ever consulted advises taking Social Security as early as possible, because we never know how long we're going to live, so you might as well get whatever you can from Uncle Sam as soon as you can, or you might miss out on it altogether.

Social Security STINKS, of course. Even at its maximum benefit, it provides NO ONE with enough income to sustain a decent, middle-class life style. HOWEVER, you mught as well take it while you can still get it. You PAID for it.

Well, I think a big part of the problem is that after the recession, millions of people turned to disability with whatever ubiquitous physical problems they had anyway, as a way to get long-term income, so now the system is all backed up and people who are really sick and hurt are lumped in with all those others. It's like when I always say we should legalize regular illegal alien working folks and make it easier and legal for them to come and go so we can focus more on stopping the bad guys at the border and inside. When you lump everyone in together, in large numbers, it gets harder to sort out who's 'for real' and who's just looking for easy money, or worse.

And like you said, FT, I paid a LOT of money into my SS. I only need a portion of it 'back.'

A bit different than my childhood in Brooklyn, I didn't see a bucket til I was about 12 years old. But we sure had a great childhood. Every few years when my parents splurged we went to the country for the summer and guess what I saw?Cows and Horses, and even Chickens!

My grandfather and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan too when I was young. We visited them frequently on weekends.

As a small boy, I thought BROOKLYN was HEAVEN, and couldn't understand why my parents wanted to move to "the country."

Our city relatives came out to see us frequently too. In the fall we all went to Tice's Farm each year to buy Halloween pumpkins, fresh-picked apples, concord Grapes, and gallon jugs of fresh-pressed apple cider.

In the spring they'd love to go with us to some of the nurseries to help pick out plants for our garden.

My maternal grandpa got along beautifully with my dad, and they would spend time happily doing yard work together.

Sunday dinners together, picnics on our patio or at outings to places like Bear Mountain State Park or Jones Beach make lots of happy memories.

I loved Brooklyn too. My grandma never left! Stayed all the well into her 90's. Bergen County had it's beautiful spots, like my other Grandma's gorgeous Victorian in Haworth. But my uncle's country place on the lake in Northwest Jersey was my favorite! So beautiful, the nature, the lake, sailing... oh, those were the days!

That makes you a member of a distinguished –– if rather large –– company, DD.

My Uncle John, the son of penniless immigrants managed by dint of very hard work to graduate wth honors from Princeton University in 1926. He went from there to graduate from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He wound up teaching there while he maintained a private practice located in The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower –– the tallest structure in all of Brooklyn at the time. The bank tower was built between 1927 and 1929.

I'm not from Brooklyn. I'm from Northern Virginia and am living in my grandmother's third house, built around 1935. 1300 square feet, no central AC, expensive oil heat, and only one john. But, hey, it's home and has been since 1972.

I can't go home again. That particular homestead, the house wherein I grew up and lived until Mr. AOW and married, was torn down in the 1980s. But on good nights me my dreams are filled with being there. Halcyon dreams, and I hate awakening.

I remember reading in the National Geographic many years ago in an article about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge that ONE out of every SEVEN U.S. Citizens was either BORN in Brooklyn or had at least one CLOSE RELATIVE who was born there.

The Brooklyn Bridge turned ONE-HUNDRED in 1983 and all sorts of articles were written about it at the time.

My maternal grandfather was one of the very first people to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge the day it opened. He often recalled this event with great pride. Coincidentally he witnessed to building of the Statue of Liberty which was dedicated in 1886. He also was one of many thusands who attended the funeral of Ulysses S. Grant, who died at age 63 in 1885 of throat cancer, and later saw him interred in the famous tomb on Riverside Drive that bears Grant's name. Grant's Tomb was not completed until 1897.

You have a very weird sense of humor FreeThinke. Those pictures you posted wth that poem show a dark side to yuor character. Were you trying to be funny, or did you want to show how the passage of time makes things decay and fall into ruin? Anyway the sweetness of the poem seemed amost mocked by your choice of illustrations.

Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.